Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Walter White Wednesday 106

Also known as the one in which the "one who knocks" becomes the "one with the Tony Award"! Yes, on Sunday, Bryan Cranston took home the Tony for Best Leading Actor in a play for his role as President Lyndon Baines Johnson in All the Way, which also won the Tony for Best Play. And yes, Cranston compared acting on Broadway to blue meth, so you could say Walter White is still on his mind.

Next week, Ensley and I will be out in California attending and presenting at the 6th Biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses. We're looking forward to seeing "conference friends" who we generally only get to brush shoulders with once every two years (a "slay age" has been determined to be three days followed by two years, incidentally) and the lineup for this conference looks quite impressive! Many of the contributors to the highly-anticipated collection Reading Joss Whedon will be there - and that's a recently-released book serious Whedon scholars will want! (You might even recognize a name or two . . .)

While we're out in Sacramento, we'll be having a signing for Wanna Cook? over at Sacramento's comprehensive independent bookstore Beers Books, so if you're in the area (or know Breaking Bad fans who might be!), spread the word and come on down! It's scheduled for 3:00 - 6:00 pm on Monday, June 23! I'll put up a quick reminder - probably over on Twitter - but the Slayage conference is a runrunrun event, so no "Walter White Wednesday" next week, although I'll be sure to check in again before we leave for sunny Sacramento!

Yes, trust me - I know that the Breaking Bad finale was last night - fear not, thoughts on that are coming for "Walter White Wednesday...

Copyright Notice

Look, I'm flattered if you read something here and like it enough to want to want to rip it off. Or even if you dislike it enough to want to rip it apart. In either case, the content of this blog is mine - I'm responsible for it and you are not to use it without first obtaining permission from me.

Copyright. It's not just a good idea. It's the law.

It really is - see Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.

K. Dale Koontz

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Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.